The idea of Mobile Internet Protocol (MIP) is to provide mobile users the ability to access the Internet anywhere wirelessly, with an identical IP address assigned to the mobile user's wireless device. With rapid changes in both technology and the communication environment, high bandwidth and low cost wireless LAN (WLAN) have emerged as a competitive choice not only for wireless high speed Internet access but also for wireless voice network access. To support mobility with Quality of Service (QoS), current MIP proposals have been found to be inefficient to support both data and time sensitive services, such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP).
In a mobile network environment, a mobile user typically accesses the network, such as the Internet, via his home network equipped with an Access Point (AP). An AP is a device that serves as a communications hub for wireless end-point devices and provides a connection to the wired network, such as the Internet. From time to time, the mobile user needs to travel outside the home network covered by the home AP to another location covered by a foreign AP. MIP is used to support such mobility when a mobile user travels from one AP to another AP.
Some MIP implementations introduce unacceptable processing and transmission delay using IP packet encapsulation scheme, i.e. encapsulate an original IP packet by the home AP in another IP packet to be forwarded to a foreign AP, in order to preserve the original IP address and are not suitable for packet voice applications, such as VoIP services. Other implementations propose more efficient handling of IP packet forwarding from the home AP to a foreign AP; however, these implementations cannot preserve the original IP address assigned to the mobile user by the home AP. More importantly, existing connections already in use by the mobile user cannot be preserved when the user travels from the range of one mobile Access Point (AP) to the range of another AP and also the current IP address of the user device cannot be preserved.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for enabling IP mobility with high speed access and network intelligence in communication networks.